TABLE ETIQUETTE.

IN some book on etiquette it is laid down as a canon that one ought never to invite to a dinner-party gentlemen of only one profession. If there are none but clergymen present, conversation will turn on theology; if lawyers make up the party, their chat will be of a professional character; and if the dry-goods business is the only one represented, it is safe to say the guests will talk "shop."

Now our dinner-tables here in Cambridge are not mirrors of etiquette, - perhaps it's a pity they are not. We do not eat our meals with that "repose of manner" which characterizes a diner-out and benefits one's digestion, nor is our after-dinner conversation of that prudish kind which is heard in some circles of society. Still there are some suggestions, even in a book on the ceremonies of polite life, that are worth following, and one of these is the banishment of "shop" from table conversation.

The other day, as I was walking up one of the aisles of Memorial Hall at the dinner hour, and trying to get some idea of our bill-o'-fare from the dishes on the tables right and left, I caught snatches of topics that seemed appropriate for any place but the dinner-table. At one table there was going on an excited discussion over the solution of oblique triangles, at another I heard a man quoting Whately verbatim, and before I reached my seat unpleasant associations connected with sulphuretted hydrogen and cyanide of potassium were suggested by an embryo chemist in my neighborhood.

It is bad enough to have a man come up and ask you your marks on the mid-years, with a view to comparing them with his own; it is annoying to have a fellow-being draw you into a discussion on hydrostatics; but when a gentleman at your own table takes out his last examination-paper and offers to tell you all about it, it is time to raise the cry against this invasion of the dinner-table by shop-talk. Dr. Johnson said that the man who did not care for his dinner would care for nothing else, and experience has shown that he was right.